- Two-time Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou to defend his title
- Mattia Furlani seeking to add world outdoor title to world indoor gold
- Jamaican talents and Diamond League winner Simon Ehammer also on medal hunt
Two-time Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou, a master of sticking to his task in search of victory, will defend his long jump title at the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25.
The 27-year-old Greek athlete stands top of this year’s world list with 8.46m achieved in June.
Below him are a clutch of ambitious and talented challengers who have strong reasons to believe they can overcome the man who has so far amassed five global gold medals indoors and outdoors in the space of the last four years.
One of the youngest of these, at 20, is Italy’s Mattia Furlani, who has been living up to the expectations he aroused by winning the 2022 European U18 title in a championship record of 8.04m and then the 2023 European U20 title in a championship record of 8.23m.
Last year Furlani wowed his native Rome by taking European silver in a world U20 record of 8.38m, and he went on to take bronze at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Furlani has followed up with more senior achievements this year by winning gold at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing with a leap of 8.30m.
That came three years after Tentoglou first earned the honour in Belgrade and just a year after the Greek athlete beat him on countback to retain the title in Glasgow after both jumped 8.22m.
Can Furlani add world outdoor gold to his world indoor crown? Or can the wily, super-competitive Tentoglou continue to hold this rising talent at bay?
Among the others who will arrive in Tokyo with serious medal prospects will be Jamaica’s Tajay Gayle, world champion in 2019 and bronze medallist at the 2023 edition in Budapest, who stands third on this year’s top list with 8.34m.
Gayle’s teammate Carey McLeod, who won world indoor bronze in 2024 having finished just one centimetre adrift of Tentoglou and Furlani, also has strong podium prospects.
Meanwhile, Switzerland’s multi-talented Simon Ehammer will see if concentrating on this event will yield him another major medal to add to bronzes he took at the 2022 World Championships and last year’s European Championships.
Having won the 2024 heptathlon title at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, he added European heptathlon silver in Apeldoorn in March, setting a national record of 6506 points.
This summer the long jump has been at the centre of his ambitions and in August he repeated his win in the 2023 Diamond League Final, this time registering 8.34m to beat Furlani by two centimetres.
Ehammer’s 2025 best has been matched by two other challengers in Tokyo: Australia’s Liam Adcock, who won world indoor bronze this year with 8.28, and Jorge Hodelin of Cuba.
Others to watch out for are the consistently effective Thobias Montler of Sweden, the world indoor silver medallist in 2022 who has jumped 8.25m this year, and China’s Shi Yuhao, who has managed 8.21m this year but has a personal best of 8.43m.
Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics